Our last week

This has been our last week in the States. We've been  "homeless" traveling thru South Carolina, and now Georgia. After we loaded our cute lil' container, we spent the next couple days doing final touch up paint, having a wonderful cleaning lady come in, and a couple of our friends come take what odds and ends were left over. What an ordeal! Poor Mike, had so much of it on his plate, since it turns out, even with a wheelchair, I'm pretty useless. But we finally drove away from our beloved Greensboro home about 7pm on Sunday. 

Phone calls was something I was able to do, turn off utilities, and make arrangements to return equipment. Apparently I should have thought if this a tad bit earlier, both Directv and Time Warner Cable want to send you boxes to return the equipment, with like 30 day notice...whoops! After MANY phone calls, promises of emailed return labels, and much time googling different scenarios, we just piled the equipment in the rental, and decided to try again after the holiday. From South Carolina, we tried again, got a new answer from Directv, finally an address, and even a promise of reimbursement for shipping if we faxed them our receipt.  (Not holding my breath) Time Warner is another story, but let me make a long story short, by saying...never again! What a frustrating company.

On a happy note, in Greenville, South Carolina we found a wonderful little mexican sandwich place (torta) and it was right next to this huge international market. I'm sure this is what we will see in Ecuador, they actually had an Ecuadorean flag on top. 

We were able to relax, and get some much needed sleep before we headed further south into Georgia. The hotel in Atlanta is right next to the airport, but super quiet, and has free happy hour, that we'll take advantage of soon. We had our appointment with the Consulate this morning to get the dogs Health Certificate approved, and I'm VERY happy to report that there were NO problems!! 

One thing we had to do before we left Greensboro, was have the Health Certificate translated and notarized, and the wonderful notary, Enrique actually hooked us up with an Ecuadorean in Quito. (who lived 16 yrs in High Point) Jose has a taxi service and called us the next day from his MagicJack, and is going to be at the Quito airport to pick us up- all 4 huge pieces of luggage, 2dogs with carriers, wheelchair and crutches! He will probably be our own personal driver for the three days we'll be in Quito, and take us back to the airport, when we fly to Manta. What a blessing! 

This is just the "above and beyond" that we are so looking forward to. It seems to be lacking here in the States, and the " what's in it for me?" Is more the norm. There's so much we can't wait to experience, the family first culture, being one of them. (Work is secondary to family) Getting simple is another, that means no car.

While driving around Atlanta today, we've been amazed by the traffic ( not in a good way). From the Consulate, we wanted to find Walmart, Google maps said the closest one was 2.5 miles away...and it was going to take 23minutes! How does anybody get anything done? What time isn't spent at work, is spent in the car-YUCK, no thanks! 

**deepsigh*. This time tomorrow we will be getting ready to board a plane to our new life, wow! I can't believe it's really almost here! Stay tuned, you know... The adventure continues!